Mirror Dreams

Deep in the Void, the lords of Nightkeep plot to ensnare our dreaming souls. Only Leanan Kite can stand up against them; unfortunately, Haven's top-rated, kick-ass mage is kind of tied up, overthrowing false monarchs, wresting back control of the Secret Service and dealing with demonic troops.

With The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Stephen R. Donaldson changed the face of fantasy fiction forever. In The Mirror of Her Dreams, the astonishing first novel in the two-volume Mordant’s Need series, Donaldson shows us a world of wondrous beauty and seductive illusion, where mirrors hold the deadliest of magics and nothing is what it seems. . . . The daughter of rich but neglectful parents, Terisa Morgan lives alone in a New York City apartment, a young woman who has grown to doubt her own existence. Surrounded by the flat reassurance of mirrors, she leads an unfulfilled life—until the night a strange man named Geraden comes crashing through one of her mirrors, on a quest to find a champion to save his kingdom of Mordant from a pervasive evil that threatens the land. Terisa is no champion. She wields neither magic nor power. And yet, much to her own surprise, when Geraden begs her to come back with him, she agrees. Now, in a culture where women are little more than the playthings of powerful men, in a castle honeycombed with secret passages and clever traps, in a kingdom threatened from without and within by enemies able to appear and vanish out of thin air, Terisa must become more than the pale reflection of a person. For the way back to Earth is closed to her. And the enemies of Mordant will stop at nothing to see her dead.

Reissued with a new preface for the centennial.

This critical examination of two dystopian television series--Black Mirror and Electric Dreams--focuses on pop culture depictions of technology and its impact on human existence. Representations of a wide range of modern and futuristic technologies are explored, from early portrayals of artificial intelligence (Rossum's Universal Robots, 1921) to digital consciousness transference as envisioned in Black Mirror's "San Junipero." These representations reflect societal anxieties about unfettered technological development and how a world infused with invasive artificial intelligence might redefine life and death, power and control. The impact of social media platforms is considered in the contexts of modern-day communication and political manipulation.

 What do psychology and neuroscience tell us about our dreams? A dream researcher and practicing psychotherapist presents the science in a nontechnical Q&A format. The history of dream interpretation—from ancient Assyrian dream books to the theories of Carl Jung—is covered and one successful approach to dream studies is described: exploring the real-life incidents brought to mind by dreams and probing their meaning to the individual in an objective way.

Awakened Dreams was written in the early 1900s at the end of the Ottoman era by Ahmet Hilmi—humorist, revolutionary, and Sufi mystic. Raji—a young man disillusioned with science, philosophy, religion, and with life as he knows it—meets a grandfather-like "madman" who lives in a cemetery and wears clothes patched with bits of mirrors. The Mirror Dede, though apparently mad, makes more sense than anyone Raji has ever met. From time to time they drink coffee together, and as the old man plays a reed flute, Raji's transformation is mirrored through a series of awakened dreams. He experiences changes of perception which show to him the limitations of our ordinary human faculties, and he encounters various prophets and holy beings who reveal to him the secret of his own existence. This book has the charm of Hesse's Siddhartha, the wry humor of a Vonnegut novel, and the visionary wisdom of Castaneda's Don Juan series. It continues to be used as a vibrant teaching tale in many Sufi circles. Though a story of mythical dimensions, Awakened Dreams is not a fantasy but a transcription of the spiritual journey based on Hilmi's own experience.

A story about insecurity, societal competition and confidence.